


BLEED LIKE ME

by darkdropout



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkdropout/pseuds/darkdropout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ohno gets married, eventually. Nino has no one to blame but himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BLEED LIKE ME

Ohno gets married, eventually. It was always going to happen, always a given, but no one mentions that now.  
  
Nino really has no one to blame but himself. He’s known Ohno for two decades, been in love with him for what feels like several more and he just – well, he just never said anything.

 

A wedding feels like an ending, like a "too late" and Nino takes it as one. He stands up at the altar - not across from Ohno but beside him - and he stares at the back of Ohno’s head while Ohno stares at his new bride and he tells himself all kinds of stories about why this is totally okay. He tells himself to let it be because he had his chance.

“But you didn’t take it,” Jun says later, the four of them (without Ohno who left before them, with his _wife)_ crammed together in the back of a car on the way from the church to the reception.

Nino pretends he doesn’t know what Jun is talking about.

“Which means you didn’t really get it at all,” Aiba adds. His eyes are watery bright and Nino pretends not to notice because Aiba’s been crying since this morning when they first saw Ohno – Ohno who was so nervous and so happy and so perfect in his marital suit. Nino wants to pretend that all those tears are for Ohno and for happiness at Ohno’s happiness, but he’s known Aiba too long and of course some of those tears are for Nino. For his lost chance.

“Maybe…” Aiba starts, but Sho puts a hand on his arm to silence him.

“Ohno’s married now,” Sho says quietly. Sho thinks like Nino, is practical like Nino and he says it kindly, gently, but with the finality that Nino feels in the empty hollow of his chest. His heart was there once, Nino remembers, but it disappeared a few years ago and he hasn’t seen it since.

“But maybe…” Aiba tries again and this time he seems to realize the futility of it himself and stops.

Nino stares out the window and ignores them, all of them in their black groomsmen’s suits, ignores how they could just as easily be dressed for a funeral as for a wedding.

 

Nino is standing alone in the back of the room, watching the celebration. In his head, he's far, far away. In his head, he’s telling himself stories about the past, rewriting history so he can get through the rest of the day. So he can get through the rest of his life.

“Nino.”

Nino knows who it is before he turns around and thinks idly that he’s been practicing the wrong tricks all these years - if he’s such a good magician, why can’t he make himself disappear?

“Nino?” Ohno says again.

Nino turns, smile plastered onto his face as fake and forced as it ever was on the cover of a magazine. He wonders if Ohno will notice this – how couldn’t he after so many years together, so many years posing and pretending together, back when they were so close that it was like they shared a heart beat. All that should make him the first to see through Nino’s sham.

Ohno smiles back. He doesn’t notice.

After so many years together, Nino knows when Ohno’s smile is genuine. It makes him feel sick.

“Why are you over here?”Ohno asks as Nino feels the empty space in his chest expand and contract.

“Come sit with me,” Ohno says.

Nino just keeps smiling, smiling so hard his jaw hurts, so hard his teeth grind. He smiles and follows Ohno back to the head table. He takes his seat next to the bride and groom.

Why, if he’s such a good magician, can’t he make himself disappear?

 

Ohno’s girlfriend (wife, Nino tells himself sharply, _wife_ , because if she was just another girlfriend…) is sweet and funny and beautiful. Her hair is long and shiny and her voice is high and clear and when she laughs the whole room looks at her adoringly - most of all Ohno.

The worst part is that Nino _likes_ her, likes her a lot because she’s also smart, sharp, and she can snap out a comeback at him every time.She fits – fits Ohno, fits his family, fits Arashi even.

Nino’s happy Ohno has her. Really.

He just kind of, very much wants to die.

 

Jun’s hands are on the back of Nino’s chair and he leans over casually, his mouth close to Nino’s ear so that only he can hear him.

“You don’t have to stay here,” he says.

Nino shakes his head. Jun’s cheek rubs against his.

“Yes, I do.”

He doesn’t get up until Ohno leaves to start his new life with his new wife.  
  
 

Sho gets married next. Ohno attends with his wife. Suddenly Jun and Aiba and Nino find themselves a group of three.But this wedding is better, less painful, for all of them. Because nothing is ending today, it’s just beginning. Aiba’s tears are only happy. Jun’s whispers are only encouragement. Everyone’s smile is genuine.

When Nino looks around, he doesn’t see a funeral. He sees a wedding.

The reception is crowded, joyful, and Nino sits with Aiba and Jun and the conversation turns to how long it will be before there’s an Arashi baby. Jun and Nino are laughing, until they notice that Aiba isn’t laughing at all.

“Akiko’s pregnant,” he tells them, quiet and wide-eyed. “I’m going to be a father.”

They don’t tell Sho until much later, when he gets back from his honeymoon, and he hugs Aiba so tightly that Aiba starts to look blue around the edges.

Nino watches them and smiles and feels like maybe he can live a little bit longer.

   
  


The last wedding is Jun’s. Jun is Arashi’s baby and there’s something bittersweet about seeing him standing at the altar in his tuxedo, all grown up.

At dinner, Nino shares a table with the others – Sho and Ohno and their wives, Aiba and his girlfriend and their son, KenKen, who is already a year old and staring up at Nino with Aiba’s bright eyes.  
  
When Jun leans over his chair again, Nino rests his head back against Jun’s chest.

“You don’t have to stay here,” Jun says, quietly, so the others can’t hear.  


Nino shakes his head. He can feel Jun’s heartbeat through his shirt.

“Yes, I do,” he says and stretches out a finger for KenKen – Arashi’s new baby – to hold on to. What KenKen doesn’t realize, Nino thinks, is that Nino’s holding on to him too.

When Sho’s wife starts talking about a couples retreat she read about in the paper, Nino excuses himself to the bathroom.

 

Nino is washing his hands in the porcelain sink when the door to the men’s room swings open, roughly.

“Nino.”

Ohno’s standing right behind him, pressed up against him like he always used to be and Nino’s startled by it. It’s been years since they touched. He looks up, looks at Ohno’s face in the mirror.

“Nino,” Ohno says again. It comes out unsteady, like it’s been so long since he’s said it that he can’t remember how to string the syllables together.

Ohno’s drunk, Nino realizes. He’s very drunk. Nino’s been sitting with Ohno at the same table all night, but he’s been trying so hard to ignore him that he hadn’t noticed Ohno refilling his own glass, over and over.

Before Nino can speak, Ohno’s arm is curling around his waist, his hand is sliding across Nino’s stomach. He can feel Ohno’s lips brushing against the back of his neck and Nino can’t – it’s like sensory overload, his body is shutting down.

And starting up.

He shoves Ohno away, his hands still wet from the sink and leaving damp imprints on Ohno’s jacket.

“No,” says Nino.

“I love you,” says Ohno.

Nino slams the door on his way out.

   
  


Nino has no one to blame but himself.

He just never said anything.

He tells himself all kinds of stories, everyday, about why he’s okay even while the hole in his chest grows bigger and bigger.

He tells himself to let it be.

“But maybe…” He hears Aiba’s voice in his head. He ignores it.

Nino had his chance. He just didn’t take it.  
   



End file.
